The Sun Times says Francona’s options after the Red Sox include the White Sox or he could just take the 2012 season off.

Two World Series, five playoff appearances, and one of the saddest team collapses of all time. This is what Terry Francona accomplished during his time with the Sox. His departure isn’t %100 certain, but it’s almost as likely as pissing on your boxers during a 3 AM bathroom break. You have to feel for the guy a little bit this season.

He had to deal with the alleged second Asian coming in Dice-K, who barely spoke English and is currently climbing the lists for “biggest busts in the MLB”. The guy wasn’t tough and was impossible to manage. He did things the Asian way, which seriously conflicted with the way Tito’s system worked. And then, Big John Lackey lands in Boston. A guy who was notorious for being too demonstrative on the mound, cussing out players who made errors in the field, and causing piss storms whenever he was taken out of a game. Throw in the whole “I divorced my wife with cancer” gig, and you have one incredibly difficult pitcher to manage. Oh, and Lackey is also climbing the “biggest busts in the MLB” list too by the way.

Tito went through a lot of shit with this team, but he’s not completely off the hook. His role as a manager was to keep this team intact and focused in order to get to the playoffs. But there is only so much he can do.

Bringing in monster free agent signings like Crawford and Gonzalez seemed like a major boost to the lineup. But when Crawford starts apologizing for his poor performance on a consistent basis and Gonzalez blames God and the scheduling for not making the playoffs, things seem unrepairable.

And I think that’s what Tito is realizing. The workhorse guys like Pedroia and Youk were int he minority with the team this year. And having a majority of soft, talented, gutless players will result in epic collapses like we all just witnessed two days ago.

So I ain’t mad at ya Tito. You will age horribly over the next few years if you decide to stick around and fix this mess.